Twitter Tags

Your Tags

This Toothbrush Debate Has The Internet Divided squib

Children, for the most part, are all given the same basic knowledge. We're taught how to tie our shoes. We're taught how to dress ourselves, our alphabet, the "correct" amount of milk to pour in a bowl of cereal. We're taught to shampoo our hair before we condition it. We're taught how to brush our teeth.

These basic, mundane activities that many of us do on a daily basis eventually get taken for granted. We do them on auto-pilot without much thought and there's an assumption that there's nothing really all that special about them. But the thing is, these activities are learned behavior, and learned behavior is taught slightly differently from person to person.

So when you put these mundane activities under the microscope and see how differently people go about doing them, you realize that we've developed ideas on the "right" way of doing something, just because that's what we've been taught and we've been doing it all our lives. A fact that's surfaced when one Twitter user posed this seemingly innocuous question:

I remember always putting toothpaste on my brush first as a kid, until I witnessed my aunt wet her brush first, place toothpaste on it, then wet it again. My whole world was changed: of course it made sense to my 7-year-old mind to wet the bristles first, I mean you had to not only clear them of any airborne germs that may have settled on them in the bathroom, but the paste will seep into the bristles better if they were wet. I haven't looked back since.

But for Twitter, the answer wasn't so simple and people held some strong opinions on proper toothpaste application protocol.

Some people's methods were just far out there.

But for the most part, there were only two modes of thought.

There was no getting to the bottom of it.

If you've been wetting the toothbrush first your entire life, how in the world can you go about brushing your teeth with a dry brush? Seems gross.

Something that dry advocates couldn't wrap their heads around.

No matter how much those in the right tried their best to explain it to them.

Some people advanced their technique.

And provided a much needed demonstration.

Then there were the people who just wanted to see the world burn.

I mean, what kind of monster is this?

Some people, believe it or not, just go at brushing their teeth completely dry.

In all seriousness, how can you trust someone who doesn't wet their brush before putting toothpaste on it? It just doesn't make sense.